Sudan rejects abduction accusations
2009-12-16 11:38
Khartoum - Sudan dismissed on Monday as "ignorant" accusations by a senior Chadian official that it was behind the abduction last month of three French aid workers.
"Such remarks can only be made by an ignorant individual who does not know the nature of the situation in the region," foreign ministry spokesperson Muaweya Osman said.
"Sudan is, by principle, against abductions and has been victim of such terrorist operations," he added.
On Monday, a senior Chadian official charged that Sudan was behind the abductions.
"It is an act of the Sudanese services to sow disorder among us," General Oki Dagache, the representative of President Idriss Deby to the UN mission in Chad, told AFP in Ndjamena.
"They are against the deployment of the UN and humanitarian workers here," he said.
A French agronomist working for the International Committee of the Red Cross was abducted on November 9 in eastern Chad while two other aid workers were seized November 22 in the Central African Republic.
A shadowy Darfur group calling itself Falcons for the Liberation of Africa has claimed the kidnappings and threatened on Thursday to kill one of the hostages if Paris failed to start negotiations within a week.
The group said it kidnapped the aid workers in a bid to get France to change its policy in the region.
Dagache claimed that the abductors "are people who come from Sudan and go back to Sudan."
"They are people manipulated by Sudanese intelligence service."
The Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman said his government "assumes its full responsibilities by guaranteeing the security of people who have been abducted and working for their release."